


just a bit of steam

by 30k (plaindmg)



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, feat. bad ideas such as: giving someone a massage in a sauna, thts it tht's the central bad idea pls enjoy, unfinished snippet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:09:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22823089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plaindmg/pseuds/30k
Summary: (vaguely) inspired by atweet.sandalphon has trouble relaxing even in a sauna; belial gives him a helping hand.
Relationships: Belial/Sandalphon (Granblue Fantasy)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 37





	just a bit of steam

**Author's Note:**

> this is an excerpt from a bigger (but unfinished) wall of text so please do not be surprised at it beginning in the middle of fuckin nowhere or ending abruptly because i decided to arbitrarily draw the line right before sanchan gets jerked off. One Day i will post the full version. one day,

“—Keeps you so tense,” Belial laughs. “No outlet to let off steam, hm, Sandy?”

Sandalphon breathes out his frustration into the humid air between them, but the stiffness in his own limbs betrays that Belial’s right. He’s not used to relaxing in general, especially not in such a setting—not with such _company,_ Belial himself half-nude on the wooden bench next to him. Unlike Sandalphon, Belial looks completely languid; red eyes sweeping up and down Sandalphon’s form shamelessly in a way Sandalphon could never stand to return. 

“You know, Sandy,” Belial continues, and his voice dips down into that low almost-cajoling register that spells trouble. “There are ways to relax that might work even for you. Pry some of that endless _responsibility_ outta you, eh?”

Sandalphon tips his head back into the wood of the sauna and decidedly refuses to close his eyes in Belial’s presence. He’d scowl, but in the heat he feels—loose, somehow. Relaxed, even if his limbs don’t yet agree. “Do I even want to know.” 

Belial pauses in his catlike stretch, arms still above his head, and fixes him with a gaze much sharper and more curious than it was a moment before. “Why, Sandy, are you telling me you’ve never…?”

Sandalphon almost slams his head against the wall with how fast he whips around in indignation. Any answer he could give to that—from the reflexive “Of course I have—!” to the furious “None of your business—!” would make him out to be the punchline to Belial’s joke. Humiliation tinges his cheeks with a flush that has nothing to do with the prickly heat. 

“No need to be embarrassed,” Belial coos when Sandalphon fails to answer, having choked on both his options. It’s somehow low, and somehow serious, something dark flickering across Belial’s eyes—or maybe it’s just a trick of the light in the dim space. Sandalphon can’t tell if the space has been that small from the beginning, or if Belial inched _closer_ somehow, but scrambling back would seem like too much like cowardice. “Is that why you’re so nervous? I have to say I’m surprised, you’d think by now Lucifer would have—”

“Shut up about Lucifer,” Sandalphon snaps. “And you’re wrong. Not that I have to prove anything to you.” His own voice sounds petulant to his ears.

Belial raises both palms at Sandalphon’s glare, a mockery of placating. “I’m not judging, Sandy. You don’t have to look at me like that, though I admit, I quite like that look on you…Ah. You are here to relax, aren’t you? If you’re having a hard time, there’s no shame in letting someone help you along.”

“Help me along,” Sandalphon repeats, flatly. When Belial just blinks at him expectantly, he specifies further. “ _You.”_

“Do you see any other willing candidates around?” Belial casts a theatrical look around the space, empty save for the both of them and a pail of water next to the hot stones. His eyes swing back to Sandalphon, fixing on him again like burrs. “Come on, Sandy, it would be good for you to let loose every once in a while.”

It’s the same line he’s used to drag Sandalphon here in the first place. The same line he’s said, with such faked earnestness, leaning over Sandalphon’s desk; Lucifer had overheard, and voiced his agreement with his usual thoughtful care, and that was that.

Not that Sandalphon particularly wants to think about Lucifer now, with Belial’s naked chest glistening an arm’s length away from him in the dim orange light. 

Something of that must show on his face, because Belial’s mouth curves by degrees into the lewd. “Oh? Something good on your mind? Care to share?”

“None of your business,” Sandalphon huffs, and thunks his head back against the wooden wall to hide his expression at least somewhat.

“So antagonistic,” Belial laughs, and tips his head further towards Sandalphon. “And yet I’ve still yet to hear you say no.”

And it should have been easy, _so_ easy to make clear what should have been already apparent all along—but somehow, something about that statement gives Sandalphon pause. He doesn’t understand why, out of all things, the idea of verbally voicing his refusal makes him consider what he’s refusing—after all, what _is_ he refusing, actually? The instinctive answer is _no,_ has always been no ever since he’s been introduced to Lucifer’s brother’s shameless secretary and learned within the first five minutes that any inch he’d give him would be stretched into a mile—and yet, when he opens his mouth, that’s not what comes out.

“To what?”

He almost regrets it the moment he says it. Regrets it even harder when he realizes that the regret is sharing space in his stomach with some kind of rising _anticipation,_ a curiosity of some kind—a quiet, unapologetic desire to probe.

Belial is silent for a second. Sandalphon tilts his head to see him better, but catches only a fraction of a moment of Belial’s empty expression before the sly debauchery creeps back in. “Why,” Belial purrs, and he’s _definitely_ creeping closer now, fingertips pressed into the wood just inches from Sandalphon’s towel to bear his weight as he leans in. “Just a bit of assistance.”

The urge to scowl hits him again, looking at Belial’s gleaming teeth and smug expression; but so does a sudden urge to swallow, and, caught off guard, he indulges the latter. Belial tracks the movement of his throat—predictable, so predictable—and has the room always been _that_ stiflingly humid? Sandalphon swallows again, trying to chase the prickly feeling away, and wipes his hands on the towel around his thighs.

“Assistance,” he repeats, weaker than he’d like. The longer he spends in the sauna the more it feels like his thoughts are melting into an incoherent mess, like taffy on a hot pan. He tries to scrape them together into something reasonably lucid. 

“Are you alright?” Belial cuts in, looking suddenly concerned. “Sandy?” Sandalphon winces as a hot palm covers his forehead, entirely ineffective since Belial’s core temperature has always been—higher than his, definitely. Even if Sandalphon had a fever, it’s not like Belial would be able to tell. Though, it does have somewhat of a sobering effect; makes him take stock of himself, his own body, until he realizes that outside of the uncharacteristic relaxation brought on by the temperature, he’s actually fine. They haven’t even been in for five minutes.

“I’m fine,” he breathes out. “It’s fine. I’m just—not used to this.”

“Take your hand off me,” he adds, when Belial just continues staring at him consideringly. 

Belial obeys, a little slower than Sandalphon would like, lifting his hand away with a swipe of his thumb against Sandalphon’s flushed cheek. “As you wish. Anywhere you’d like me to put my hands _on_ you?”

“Is it all about sex with you?” He knows he sounds annoyed—is _glad_ he’s managed annoyance, even, but Belial doesn’t waver in the least.

“Who said it was about sex? Sandy, really, I don’t know what you think of me, but—” He pauses, and looks at Sandalphon more closely. This time, when he laughs, it’s far more mirthless. “You really thought that, didn’t you.”

Sandalphon can’t argue—he did, absolutely, think that, and it shouldn’t throw him off so much to even consider the idea it’s not what Belial meant, but—his silence speaks for itself, and Belial’s disappointed sigh cuts through the air between them. 

“Just a massage, Sandy, nothing untoward.” He taps Sandalphon’s shoulder, uncharacteristically gentle. “Will you let me?”

He pauses, hand hovering a careful—almost _polite—_ inch away from Sandalphon’s skin. Waits for Sandalphon to swallow, reflexively, and swallow again. Waits for him to speak.

“Fine.”

Even with permission granted, it’s like that faux pas between them has changed something; Belial’s hand comes a lot more careful than expected, pushing gently at his shoulder and skimming down to his spine as he pushes Sandalphon into a more prone position along the bench. He ends up with his head braced on his arms, legs still in their previous position as Belial scoots closer and gets both hands on Sandalphon’s skin. Small mercies that he’s flexible.

“Relax,” Belial says above him, voice pitched low. “This will feel good.”

He’s not wrong; the room is so warm, Belial’s hands even warmer, that Sandalphon doesn’t so much as shudder when they sweep up to his shoulders. The fingers squeeze, then dig in for a moment of blinding sharpness, and then rub away the ache as soon as it blooms—scorching hot, somehow, Belial has always run so much _hotter_ than all of them, but somehow it feels good. Feels satisfying, like he’s being burned clean. 

The hands are _big,_ too, he realizes once they curve lower to capture almost half his upper back in their sweeping span. Belial’s thumbs dig in near his spine, into a spot he’s never noticed he was tense before, and the sensation sparks into pain-pleasure that makes him tense on it reflexively; almost _ticklish,_ but somewhere deep down in his flesh, and then Belial does it again as if he’s noticed, pressing in harder.

That makes Sandalphon gasp into his folded arm involuntarily. The thumbs on his back dig in hard in a sharp motion, as if Belial has zeroed in precisely on the spot that would hurt the most, and that almost tears a noise out of Sandalphon’s throat; but the pain is soothed away almost immediately, with firm and sure sweeps of Belial’s thumbs across the skin, and what trickles in once it ebbs away is a loose and comfortable satisfaction.

It’s like Belial is unraveling the knots of pain somehow, Sandalphon thinks nonsensically. Like he’s clay, and Belial’s hands are working out the lumps to leave something plastic and warm behind. The hands skim lower still, fingers firm and sure, _so sure,_ like Belial has managed to map out his body already and not miss a single spot to dig in his fingers hard or smooth a palm a touch too firmly over. 

Then he hits a spot with such precision that Sandalphon sees stars for a moment, the pain so exquisite-sweet-blinding that he can’t hold back the moan that chokes out of his throat in response. Belial’s hands still; Sandalphon’s cheeks _burn,_ but he’s not moving away, either. Belial’s hands just rest there, for a beat, warm heavy weight across Sandalphon’s back, and then he presses the exact same spot _again._

Sandalphon bites down on his lip to keep the whine down, but it reverberates in his throat regardless; it’s as if Belial took that first moan as permission of some sort, because now his hands slide back up his sides with seemingly perfect memory of every single spot that’s made Sandalphon jerk or shudder before, chasing every single one with merciless determination. If he was clay before, now he’s an instrument of some kind, an instrument Belial seems determined to drag notes out of at any cost—and it’s good, it’s so blindingly _good,_ leaving him in a contradictory haze of pliant and on edge. 

Then Belial skims his fingers up his back, feather-light, and he shivers at the sensation. They come to rest around the back of his neck, grip not quite heavy, but unyielding.

It’s roughly around that time that Sandalphon has two realizations hitting him at once—one, that his legs are beginning to ache in their position. And two—that he’s half hard, and hasn’t even noticed.

“Enjoying yourself, Sandy?”

The hands skim down to his hips, resting just above the towel, and for a mad moment Sandalphon imagines what it would feel like if they tugged it loose, fit themselves against bare skin and worked that building ache out just like they managed to work every spot of tension out of his back. Wonders if Belial would do it, would run his palms over Sandalphon’s flushed thighs, would _notice_ him straining against the towel—half humiliation, half thrill.

Belial squeezes his hips, a silent reprimand. “San~dy,” and the note of reproach shouldn’t make Sandalphon flush further, but it’s—as if Belial _knows. “_ Some feedback would be nice. Let’s have some participation from you, hm? Tell me how you feel.”

Sandalphon’s breath hitches at that, and Belial leans over him, chest radiating heat. “Tell me if you _like it.”_

 _“Yes,”_ he chokes out, a simple and involuntary truth, though the way it comes out almost as a whine betrays more than his words do. 

“Perfect,” Belial purrs in response, and those hands slide up an inch to circle his waist. “You’re so responsive, Sandy, such a pleasure to work with.” He skims his fingertips up to Sandalphon’s stomach, which jerks reflexively, sensitive to the touch; punctuating Belial’s point. “Takes so little to get such a reaction from you.”

Sandalphon can’t argue with that, even if he desperately wants to argue _something._ His hair hangs in his face, in spikes with sweat now; his legs still ache, even more so now that he’s noticed—and, well. That other thing, too. 

“So,” Belial says, tone carefully contemplative. A thumb brushes a circle against Sandalphon’s hot skin, over and over, hypnotic in the repetition. “What’s the plan, here?”

Sandalphon makes a confused noise in response. “What?”

Belial clicks his tongue, and somehow manages to make _that_ sound smug. “Will you walk out like that? Give the nice spa ladies an eyeful? My, Sandy, I didn’t take you for an exhibitionist.”

The shame that burns through him once he realizes exactly what Belial is talking about is scorching, incandescent, humiliation that might as well share its name with anger for all it sets his cheeks flaming. “You—” he splutters, though it’s not something he can deny. Blame on someone else, though, perhaps—“You _planned_ this?”

Belial laughs in response, and _now_ it feels amused, and smug, and warm. “Plan it? No. I’m hardly to blame for it, if you are so touch-starved a shoulder rub gets you going.” He leans in, ever closer, until Sandalphon can feel the heat radiating off his chest along his back. “But I don’t mind, either. If you’d like a helping hand…”

Sandalphon’s breath leaves his throat in a helpless growl. 

**Author's Note:**

> (vaguely) inspired by a tweet by [@indigotortoise](https://twitter.com/indigotortoise). very sorry for not doing it justice but perhaps. one day...


End file.
